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films challenge and often distance the spectator, who is mostly engaged

intellectually and only slightly immersed in the investigations and the


combination of sound and image.

Orlando
Potter turned to Orlando soon after The Gold Diggers; however, it swiftly
became apparent that, in light of the confusion and ambivalence met
by her previous film, few funders believed that she could adapt Woolf’s
novel. While finding ways to fund Orlando, Potter was also making other
projects: a short film, The London Story (1986); a four-part television
series, Tears, Laughter, Fear, and Rage (1986); and a documentary, I
Am an Ox, I Am a Man, I Am a Woman (1988). Although these projects
could be seen as gap-fillers while she was raising money for Orlando,
each goes some way towards developing elements that would be crucial
to the latter film and its success.
In The London Story, she took a very simple linear, cause-and-effect
narrative and used editing and performances to bring it alive. In Tears,
Laughter, Fear, and Rage, she used interviews with a variety of people
to contemplate the gendered natured of emotions, and for I Am an Ox,
I Am a Man, I Am a Woman, she visited Russia to research early Russian
women filmmakers who had been otherwise forgotten, perhaps continu-
ing her interest in Russian culture that began with her encounter with
> > >=

the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s in her teens, then continued with
her visit to the Eisenstein museum in Moscow in 1984.
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The London Story is a fifteen-minute short that uses music, dance,


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action, and intrigue to question Britain’s political alliances with America


and Europe. Jacky Lansley and George Yiasoumi, both seen in The
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Gold Diggers, star along with Lol Coxhill. The film opens in Whitehall
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with a low-angle shot looking up at Jacky’s face as she takes photos of a


doorman and Lol entering the cabinet office. Her surreptitious behavior
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establishes a spy narrative. We cut to two sequences of degraded hand-


held footage in which George the doorman and Lol are interviewed.
Both are idiosyncratic: while George opens doors and wants to talk of
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nothing else, the other man is fond of briefcases.


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The older man listens to a news broadcast, which fills in the political
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background to the film. It is vaguely suggested that “the British govern-


ment” is being pressured to decide their alliances on economic relations

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with either Europe or the United States and that the future of British
industry depends on this. The premise having been set up, we then wit-
ness the smuggling of information. The smuggling begins with Jacky, who
takes a government minister to the theater and is handed a document
by George. Jacky hands this on to Lol, who takes it to a skater at an ice
rink. In a hilarious and ridiculous interlude, it is then returned to Jacky
by Lol on a bicycle, and she sneaks it into the minister’s briefcase. A
newscast the following day tells us that there has been a radical U-turn
in the government’s strategy and that this is an issue of public informa-
tion. It leaves us with the question, Who are the allies? The film closes
with a gentle choreography of movements by the three performers in
which Jacky is handed between the two men.
The two documentaries Potter made for television—Tears, Laughter,
Fear, and Rage and I Am an Ox, I Am a Man, I Am a Woman—were
commissioned, not initiated by Potter. Both feed into her work to follow.
For the latter, Potter’s time in Russia led to her eventual collaboration
with Lenfilm Studios in St. Petersberg, who provided their facilities, their
expertise, and some of the budget for Orlando. The former fills the gap
between Potter’s antinarrative work and her more mainstream produc-
tions. It is as if she were rehearsing the role of the emotions in her work.
This documentary also pays homage to Michael Powell, who appears in
it shortly before his death. It raises the issue of the gendering of emo-
> > >=

tions, since many of those interviewed comment on how they, as men or


women, are expected to react to situations, and how that fits or doesn’t
A

fit with how they actually react. Potter has said, “‘I think detachment is a
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virtue. The stereotype of the woman as incapable of detachment comes


from the idea that women are closer to the emotions, closer to the dark
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side—being outside of language in the land of unconscious. A certain


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kind of misogyny creeps into theoretical language . . . the supposed


emotionality of women, the ability to express and discharge feeling, in
9F >

fact can create a more detached world view’” (qtd. in Cook, “British”
17). Her obvious resistance to men and women being pigeonholed into
expected ways of feeling is a key part of her next film.
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The London Story was made by Potter with her own money, having
P

been turned down by the BFI and Channel Four. However, once the
1

film was made, Channel Four immediately screened it, its reception
was enthusiastic, and the BFI bought it. Although the film is slight, it

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illustrates Potter’s developing style. There is an economy of means and a
structure that suits the constraints. Reading the film with her next work
in mind, the conflict of Britain, torn between its European partners
and forming an alliance with America, is suggestive of the problems
the British film industry was undergoing at this time. Ironically, Potter
was directly caught up in these problems when trying to find support
for Orlando.
Orlando was in production for seven years, during which time, ac-
cording to Christopher Sheppard, “‘everyone in the U.K. had turned it
down, and potential U.S. partners had all rejected it.’” Consequently,
Sheppard writes, “‘The only way Orlando was going to get made was as
a European co-production’” (qtd. in Finney 94). The team that would
make it happen only came together in the final four years. Tilda Swinton
had worked on the character with Potter, Walter Donohue had filled
the role of script editor, and most importantly, Christopher Sheppard
became Potter’s producer.
It was primarily Sheppard’s job to compel others to believe in Potter’s
vision. That she has still gone in her own direction, rather than relying on
critics or studios and money-men, is a tribute to Potter’s strength of vision
and distinctive creative personality. As if reflecting her struggle, her films
depict characters who overcome odds, negotiate conflicts, and seek a
hidden truth, a change in society, or a connection with another person.
> > >=

The name of the production company formed for Orlando, Adventure


Pictures, has proven increasingly apt, as every film Potter has made with
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this company has been adventurous in form, style, and budget.


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Development of the script for Orlando was supported by the Na-


tional Film Development Fund (NFDF) in 1988, a development loan
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from the European Script Fund (SCRIPT) in 1989, and a second sum
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from NFDF and then SCRIPT in 1991. By this time Russia’s Lenfilm
studios had agreed to contribute, and the film had the backing of British
9F >

Screen, the European Co-production Fund, Mikado Film, Italy, Rio in


France, and Sigma in the Netherlands. However, as the film went into
preproduction, the French blocked Orlando’s application to Eurimages
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because of Britain’s refusal to join the scheme. Christopher Sheppard


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writes, “‘Although Orlando had the right percentage splits between its
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European co-production members to technically qualify, objectors ar-


gued that by allowing an essentially British-led project to receive backing

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was sending the wrong messages to both its own members and the U.K.
government’” (qtd. in Finney 94). The only solution to the 20 percent
shortfall in the budget was to persuade some of their backers to take
delayed repayments (which SCRIPT agreed to do) and for many mem-
bers of the cast and crew—including Potter and Sheppard—to defer
payment of their fees.
This crisis, just before production began, was only one of many that
Potter and Sheppard had to deal with in the seven years of Orlando’s
development and completion. Others included having to remortgage
their houses and beg and borrow from friends and relations to make
up the $370,000 cost of development, only sixty-six thousand dollars of
which was covered by funders. The original $10.6 million budget was
cut to $3.8 million, and at the last minute there were costs that couldn’t
be budgeted for prior to shooting, such as having to make an unofficial
payment to local authorities in Uzbekistan, who changed their mind
about granting permission to shoot, or covering the costs to reshoot
Charlotte Velandrey after she became sick and had to return to Paris
early. These meant that ultimately the fees for the director, producer,
and company had to be deferred 100 percent.
Ironically, given Potter’s struggles with funding in Britain, Pam Cook
declares, “[I]ndeed it is a film made by a woman—Sally Potter’s Or-
lando, a co-production which wears its dual British/European identity
> > >=

on its sleeve—that suggests a positive way forward for British cinema”


(Cook, “Border” xiii). The film’s status as a coproduction that made its
A

international partners work for it, and whose pan-European locations


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feed into a look that is at once about Englishness and at the same time
part of a wider European history, makes the film unique and for many
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a successful case study for further coproductions. Potter’s films that fol-
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low, while less complex in their production histories, have all been put
together as coproductions and similarly cross continents and cultures.
9F >

The London/Paris locations of Thriller and London/Iceland city and


landscapes of The Gold Diggers must not be forgotten either. Potter’s cin-
ema has never located itself purely in England. However, from Orlando
A Q

onwards, her films have used their main protagonists’ travel to explore
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identity as something pertaining not merely to one’s sex or gender but


1

also to one’s identification of home. Orlando initiates this theme, with a


main character who seeks to find him/herself “at home.” Only after four

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hundred years, once she has lost the family house and her heritage but
produced a book and a child, does she achieve this feeling.
Orlando was premiered at the Venice Film Festival in October 1992.
It received a standing ovation and won an OCIC (International Catholic
Organization for Cinema and Audio-Visuals) critics award; it went on
to win awards at other festivals, a BAFTA, and Oscar nominations for
design and makeup. The film was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics
and distributed in art-house and mainstream cinemas. Those who knew
of Potter’s previous work and her struggle to make Orlando were typi-
cally kind in their assessments of the film. Screen International declared,
“[F]our years in the making, Orlando bursts onto the screen in a blaze
of glory” (Dobson 23), while for The Guardian’s critic Derek Malcolm,
the film managed to combine Potter’s “previous formalist concerns with
a stronger, more vivid grasp of narrative.”
Little sign of the struggles that went into the making of Orlando is
evident on the screen itself. As most reviewers commented, the film has
a sumptuousness and fullness of detail that belies its modest budget.
Its narrative flows, indeed rushes past masterfully, and conceptually it
is one of Potter’s most satisfying creations. The most positive reviews of
Orlando came from critics who judged the film in cinematic terms, as an
art-house crowd-pleaser, an enchanting British film by a woman director,
or a European coproduction that proves the possibility of artistic suc-
> > >=

cess through (or despite) cross-cultural collaboration. Subsequent writ-


ing on Orlando has also hovered around these subjects, discussing the
A

film’s narrative structure and “postmodern” use of costume drama. For


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Julianne Pidduck, “The ironic costume, gesture, and character move-


ment employed by Potter here highlight issues of gendered physical and
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social mobility and constraint” (177), while for Cristina Degli-Esposti,


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adopting a “neo-baroque rereading” of the film, the mise-en-scène is


also impressive: “With an abundance of figural representation, Potter’s
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film falls into a particular kind of cinema of excess” (75). For Anne
Ciekco, Orlando becomes a key film in the debate over national and
transnational film production. Its adaptation of Woolf’s novel, its cast-
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ing of iconic British actors and personalities, landscapes, and history


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all situate it as satirizing Britishness. However, due to the travel across


1

continents that is part of the novel, the coproduction arrangements that


brought the film about, and international casting choices (Charlotte

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Velandrey, Lothaire Blutheau), Orlando can also be seen as a European
or transnational film: “Through the staging, writing, and enactment of
history and the performance of gender, Orlando destabilizes generic
categories” (Ciecko, “Transgender” 19).
In terms of its place in cinematic history, Orlando’s originality and
richness seemed without debate. However, some critics who judged
the film as an adaptation of Woolf’s novel were less satisfied. While the
adaptation of novels for the cinema is common practice, Potter has
noted that Orlando had been thought to be unadaptable because of
its massive scope (its story crosses three centuries), its central conceit
(a main character who, for no apparent reason, changes from male to
female), and Woolf’s playful and ironic style of narration, which depends
upon written language for its effect. Potter’s answer to these difficul-
ties was to condense, to provide a motivation through plot, and to use
direct address, in which Orlando looks into the camera and speaks to
the audience.
Orlando raises questions about the differences between literature and
film, the written word and the visual image. With regard to the written
word, Thriller and The Gold Diggers display Potter’s accomplishment as a
wordsmith, featuring intricate scripts containing poems, riddles, and lyr-
ics. The screenplays for Orlando, The Tango Lesson, and The Man Who
Cried showcase Potter’s skillful dialogue, and YES reinforces her status
> > >=

as a talented writer, with its original and inventive iambic-pentameter


verse. As a multimedia polymath who has also written lyrics, it almost
A

goes without saying that Potter was ever aware of the differences between
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Woolf’s written word and any visual interpretation of it.


While quibbling over Potter’s editing of Woolf’s novel, much discus-
6>

sion among critics revolved around Potter’s use of the reverse look as
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an equivalent to Woolf’s self-consciousness and her treatment of the


sex-change. Potter’s use of the reverse look and of the observer who
9F >

comments to us derives from her own history of creative practice. In light


of this history, Potter’s interest in Woolf’s novel makes perfect sense.
The novel employs a strikingly self-conscious narrator who is con-
A Q

tinually digressing from the “action” and commenting on the process


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of telling the story. Potter’s early work was always interested in pointing
1

things out to us, asking us to engage intellectually, and ruminating on


the inadequacies of language, so it is appropriate that when she adapts

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a novel she would choose one that exhibits its insecurities about the
conventions of novel writing.
For Pamela Caughie, Woolf’s “playful surface” in her novel should be
linked to her central ideas: “Language and identity are closely related”;
“Just as Orlando’s identity swings from the extreme of conventionality to
the extreme of eccentricity . . . so the language shifts from the transpar-
ent conventionality of clichés . . . to the opaque originality of Orlando
and Shel’s cipher language” (77–78). Potter’s adaptation of Orlando tries
to find a visual equivalent to this creative use of language and narrative
form, and the reverse looks are one way of doing so. The shift in focus
to gender identity rather than the formation of a writer is another, as if
to visualize Caughie’s comment that in the novel “identity is as variable
as language, language as vulnerable as identity” (78).
For Suzanne Ferriss and Kathleen Waites, Potter’s devices “break
. . . the illusion and chang[e] . . . the way we ‘read’ film, much like
Woolf’s novel challenges the way we ‘read’ or understand gender and
identity” (111). Perhaps the central transformation from novel to film
is the moment where Orlando changes sex. In the novel, this simply
happens, with the narrator putting an end to all discussion: “But let
other pens treat of sex and sexuality; we quit such odious subjects as
soon as we can” (Woolf, Orlando 98). In the film, Potter wants her
audience to identify with her main character, so she provides a reason:
> > >=

the inability of the male Orlando to fulfill the manly duty of fighting
and killing his “enemy.”
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For Leslie K. Hankins, Potter’s treatment of Orlando represents a


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“heterosexualized betrayal of a lesbian love letter” (168). She points to


the casting of gay men (Quentin Crisp and Jimmy Sommerville) but
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laments that “the lesbian presence in the film is conspicuous by its


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absence” (172). Hankins also critiques Potter’s erasure of the female


Orlando’s relationships with women. However, she restricts her discus-
9F >

sion to plot and casting, and although she notes that in the novel “the
lesbian narrative is always deferred, suggested, held between the lines”
(169), she does not consider the potential for lesbian identification in the
A Q

exchange of desiring gazes between two women in the scenes between


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Orlando and Sacha. These scenes offer instances in which the diegetic
1

“male gaze” is troubled, and the actual female-to-female nature of these


looks complicates matters even further.

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It is clear from its enthusiastic reception that Potter’s Orlando sup-
plied much pleasure to its audience. Even more evident is the fact that
this did not come at the expense of the more serious issues it deals with,
from masculinity and femininity as cultural constructions and perfor-
mances to the social disempowerment of women because of inheritance
laws. Orlando, who will be disinherited if she has no son, should be seen
alongside Mimi, who, as a poor seamstress, cannot afford to have chil-
dren, and Ruby, whose value, like gold, is as an exchange mechanism; in
herself she has no value. While it is a “crossover” (Lane 96) film, Orlando
does not abandon Potter’s previous concerns or her emerging style.
How, then, does the film make the leap across the “pleasure-time
blues” of Potter’s early films into the realm of the intelligent and enter-
taining? Orlando represents a movement in Potter’s practice from the
avant-garde to art cinema, overtly feminist politics of sexual difference to
a more humanist assertion of “same person, different sex,” and complex
counter-cinema strategies to a simpler, classical narrative structure.
In Orlando, some of the sketchiness of Potter’s early films is filled in.
We have “real” set design rather than performance spaces and geographi-
cally and historically definable places rather than mythic or dreamlike
spaces. Rather than the film being structured around a quest to find
out the truth behind a story (“Was I murdered?”) or to connect two
characters (“We have ninety minutes to find each other”), Orlando tells
> > >=

a story that advances through time in which the main protagonist meets
a variety of people and develops and undertakes a journey that reaches
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an end. The film’s images, passages to the illusionism, are sumptuous


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and stunning to look at, and intricate camera work and editing comment
on the story.
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However, this description of the more conventional elements of Or-


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lando fails to account for the narration. In novel and film, the moment
when Orlando changes sex is downplayed, and the extraordinary nature of
9F >

the tale is deferred into the way that it is told. In her telling, Potter uses
elements recognizable from her early work: an observer figure to guide
us through and comment on the action and an episodic structure, here
A Q

through the interruption posed by the intertitles. This is combined with


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self-conscious camera movement, brusque editing, key musical themes,


1

and an emphasis on artifice through performances, costumes, and set-


tings—all of which disrupt the illusion that is otherwise created.

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Despite its art-cinema flavor, Orlando opens with the same kind of
attempt to connect with its audience that is found in Thriller and The Gold
Diggers. While in the earlier two films, Colette Laffont invites us to solve
first a riddle and then a “murder,” in Orlando we are directly addressed by
the protagonist, who indicates that the narration will be self-conscious and
playful, drawing us in and addressing us directly. Like Colette/Mimi, the
dialogue shifts persons to indicate that Swinton is playing a part. Colette/
Mimi shifts from the third person—“They do what they can for her, but
Mimi dies”—to the first person (“Is this the story of my life?”), as she
begins to retell the story from Mimi’s point of view. Similarly, Swinton’s
“narrator,” whom we do not meet again, begins in third person: “There
can be no doubt about his sex—despite the feminine appearance that
every young man of the time aspires to. And there can be no doubt about
his upbringing. Good food, education, a nanny, loneliness, and isolation.
And because this is England, Orlando would therefore seem destined
to have his portrait on the wall and his name in the history books. But
when he”—at which point, the onscreen Orlando turns to look to the
camera and declares, “That is, I,” then looks away again as the narration
continues—“came into the world, he was looking for something else.
Though heir to a name which meant power, land, and property, surely
when Orlando was born it wasn’t privilege he sought, but company.”
Colette’s shift in person begins an acting-out of the La Bohème story
> > >=

and is therefore an evident getting-into-role that is in keeping with


the performance space of the attic. Although Orlando’s similar shift in
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person is not so abrupt, since “he” is already “in role,” in the opening
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image of the film there is the same sense of a performance being put
on, as evidenced in the camera movement, editing, and dialogue. The
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opening shot frames Orlando in a field of long grass beneath a tall tree.
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He is already pacing from left to right, but the camera is still for a few
seconds. Then the camera also begins to move, but it does so in the op-
9F >

posite direction to Orlando. Though its movements are contrary, they


are also in time with Orlando’s own. As he moves, the camera moves;
as he pauses, the camera hesitates; as he paces back, the camera tracks
A Q

once more. It is almost as if Orlando and the camera are playing a game
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together, suggesting a closeness between camera and character.


1

The narration begins after the first complete track from left to right,
at which point the sound of Orlando’s rehearsal of his poem is turned

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down so that we can hear the intimate voiceover. We continue to look
at Orlando pacing until the narrator says, “Orlando would therefore
seem destined to have . . . .” Orlando is sitting under the oak tree, and
we cut to a close-up on his face. He looks off right, yet his look is not
the subjective or contemplative one we might expect. Instead, at the
moment that Orlando interjects, “That is, I,” the swift darting of his eyes
towards the camera makes it apparent that he has been listening to the
narrator and therefore aware that he is being looked at.
We cut to a wider shot as the narrator says, “Though heir to a name,”
and we see Orlando pick up a piece of blank parchment and a quill.
Then, as the narrator says, “but company,” we cut back to a close-up on
Orlando’s hands with his quill poised above the parchment. He returns
it to the ground, and we cut back to his face; his eyes, at first looking
down at the page, are then raised, though they still do not look at us.
Orlando’s shift from third-person narrator to speaking subject raises
the possibility that this opening sequence should be seen retrospec-
tively as the opening of the book Orlando will write. If we take this
to be the case, then Orlando can be seen to possess the same kind of
circular narrative as Thriller. This first look to camera is a reverse look
that shatters the “fourth wall,” which ensures that characters remain
> > >=
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From the beginning of Orlando, the reverse look


is established. © Adventure Pictures Ltd.

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unaware of our spectatorship. Our position as anonymous voyeurs is
guaranteed by this rule. However, such conventions work alongside a
conception of the privileged position of the spectator and the powerful
“patriarchal” camera. As we’ve seen with Potter’s earliest film, Jerk, she
has always rejected the powerful and seamless kind of direction because
of its effect on power relationships inside the frame, between bodies
in space, and outside the frame, between the audience and the film.
Orlando attempts to connect us intimately with the main character.
In her introduction to the published screenplay, Potter writes that the
look back is “a golden thread that would connect the audience, through
the lens, with Orlando, and in this way the spectacle and the spectator
would become one through the release of laughter” (Potter, Orlando
xiii). Although we do not laugh at every look Orlando casts at us, the fact
that with each he extracts himself from the fiction to share something
with us implies the connection Potter suggests.
While the reverse look invites an intimacy and reciprocity between
Orlando and the audience, the tone and content of the voiceover under-
cuts this slightly. We have several seconds to view Orlando before the
narration begins. In these seconds, whether we recognize Tilda Swinton
or not, we may have been wondering if this character is male or female.
Therefore, when the narrator begins matter of factly, “There can be
no doubt about his sex,” the image and/or our extratextual knowledge
> > >=

contradict this statement. The line that follows (“Despite the feminine
appearance that every young man of the time aspires to”) sets up femi-
A

ninity and masculinity as indefinite categories that don’t necessarily have


0DD

anything to do with one’s sex. The uncertainty that this opening image
and narration creates is somewhat relieved by Orlando’s first look back,
6>

which, as well as establishing a connection, asks us to suspend our dis-


P ? DD F

belief and begins the process of asking us to relate to an essence rather


than an appearance. The look back at the camera and these opening lines
9F >

together reinforce our complicity in the illusionism of the story. Since


there clearly are doubts about Orlando’s sex when we first see “him,”
the narration should be seen as ironic, and this tone is confirmed later
A Q

by the description of Orlando’s upbringing: “Good food, education, a


P

nanny”—all of which seem usual—joined by “loneliness and isolation.”


1

The look back might also be seen as a plea to serve as company.

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The reflexivity of the opening of Orlando, which invites us to be
inside and outside at the same time, is in keeping with the “exterioriza-
tion of consciousness” that Potter has spoken of as the predominant style
in Woolf’s novel. We must get used to watching and experiencing with
Orlando, seeing events and then hearing Orlando’s thoughts about them.
While such a viewing position might be thought of as an identification
with and then a distancing from a character, we are never fully tied in
with Orlando; ours is a relationship that must grow over time. Time is
obviously important to the narrative, since over time Orlando learns
the problems of identification as a man and a woman, finds company
(however briefly), and succeeds in creating his/her novel.
The structure of Orlando is accumulative, as every new stage, marked
with an intertitle, suggests a moving on and equally a moving away from
what has gone before. The opening untitled scenes act as the prologue,
introducing us to Orlando. This is followed by “1600 DEATH,” “1610
LOVE,” “1650 POETRY,” “1700 POLITICS,” “1750 SOCIETY,” “1850
SEX,” and finally “BIRTH.” The picaresque nature of these episodes is
suggested by the heavy issues of the titles. The film does not hesitate in
jumping from one stage to the next, and this is matched by the speed
at the heart of the mise-en-scène. Orlando begins the film at speed. In
his lateness for a royal appointment, he is running from boyhood leisure
into a world of responsibility and parental and societal rules. This initial
> > >=

fleeing continues as a metaphor for aging and the passing of time. Fol-
lowing the queen’s visit, which opens the film, the next sequence begins
A

with a slowly walking funeral procession, as Orlando buries his mother


0DD

shortly after the offscreen death of his father. In “1610 LOVE,” which
is largely set on ice, we have scenes with groups walking and skating.
6>

In “1650 POETRY,” Orlando runs behind the poet Green, who tries to
P ? DD F

blackmail the vulnerable young poet into guaranteeing him a pension.


In “1700 POLITICS,” after arriving in Khiva in central Asia on a swaying
9F >

camel, Orlando walks with a group of twinned men to meet the Khan.
The episode titled “1750 SOCIETY” begins with a distressed servant
following Orlando across the lawn and warning her about taking up
A Q

the invitation to the poets and ends with Orlando running from Arch-
P

duke Harry through the maze and out onto moorland. Finally, “1850
1

SEX” ends with a pregnant Orlando running across a battlefield through

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muddy puddles. Only in “BIRTH” is walking or running replaced by a
motorbike and a distinct lack of haste. In none of these scenes is there
any significant geographical travel going on, but psychological develop-
ments in Orlando’s search for company are suggested. Thus the Khan,
Greene, the poets, and Harry all want something from Orlando and also
offer different ways of performing the self, as English ambassador, poet
or benefactor, muse or poet, and object of desire.
Throughout this whirlwind tour of history, each episode is crowded
with detail and filled with sumptuous colors and movement. Like the
walking motif that keeps history moving, a series of theatrical effects
and performances ensure that each episode is colorful and entertaining.
The first effect is the aside to camera that operates like a soliloquy in the
theater. Orlando does not actually speak to us, but his/her looks definitely
communicate his/her feelings about a person at a given moment. There
are thirteen of these looks to camera, some accompanied by dialogue
and others not. Orlando seeks something different in each.
Theatricality is also present through the over-the-top settings and
costumes, in which each era is crowded with detail and filmed with
sumptuous colors and movement. There is something ostentatious about
Orlando’s costumes. Often they match a particular setting. For example,
when he goes to see the queen, her striped bed linen is matched by
Orlando’s striped top. As the Brontëesque heroine, circular patterns in
> > >=

Orlando’s headdress are repeated on her shoulders. In each era there


are performances and ceremonies going on, from Orlando’s recitation to
A

the queen to the dancers on the ice, the creation of the tableau vivant,
0DD

the peasants playing with poles, and the fireworks.


If we include the many moments of singing—from Jimmy Sommer-
6>

ville singing for the queen and the woman in Uzbek to the man singing
P ? DD F

for the poets and the closing “angel”—then the quota of performance
matches her two previous films, both of which included dance sequences
9F >

and song. However, the effect is different here. In Thriller, the opera is
used as an example of the kind of hyperbolic text within which Colette
can find no place, while the “dancing” is a way of reinforcing the place of
A Q

the past in the present and finding an equivalent, such as when “Mimi”
P

says that she was carried out “in arabesque, yes that’s right, in arabesque.”
1

The “perfection” of the arabesque position (which relies on the support


of a partner and yet is heralded not for the work of the partner but for

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the perfection of the dancer’s technique as she bends herself into a
strain position) says something particular about the “feminine” in the
same way that Mimi’s fate, prescribed as it is from the beginning of the
opera, also speaks of working-class femininity and suffering. Orlando’s
true love, Shelmerdine, asserts, “If I was a woman . . . I might choose
not to sacrifice my life caring for my children, nor my children’s children.
Nor to drown anonymously in the milk of female kindness. But instead,
say, to go abroad,” whereas Colette/Mimi in Thriller realizes that the
suffering woman is her sole function in the drama.
The repetition of theatrical and performance elements throughout
Potter’s films is accompanied by the development of her cinematic style,
including her use of camera and editing, mise-en-scène, and narrative.
Potter has spoken in interviews of wanting to get a balance in Orlando,
to depict history without striving for authentic details. The film’s disre-
spectful and playful tone is set by Orlando’s asides. However, an even
more powerful force in upholding this tone is the camera movement,
which offers a reinforcing gesture of irony. Therefore, the sets may
have been dressed to maximum decorative effect, using parallel lines
and renaissance perspective, yet the camera disrespects these lines and
decenters many of its shots.
The first example of the undercutting camera is in the opening scene.
Tracking in the opposite direction to Orlando, the camera’s height is
> > >=

relatively low; we can see the long grass in front of him. The move-
ment of the camera immediately inserts a self-conscious element into
A

the scene, along with the voiceover, which draws attention to our look
0DD

at Orlando, and the invitation to share his space and thoughts when no
one else is around. The movement of the camera is not the masterly one
6>

we might associate with the tracking shots in the films of someone like
P ? DD F

Peter Greenaway, with which Orlando shares the distinctive production


design of Ben Van Os and Jan Roelfs and is therefore often compared.
9F >

The camera’s movement is casual; it does not “float” ethereally. As it


tracks, we can see that the ground is bumpy. The long grass moves,
and as the camera stops moving in one direction, it seems to hesitate
A Q

uncertainly. The camera draws attention to itself: it does not give us


P

seamless framing; it moves around, reframes, and follows; it intervenes.


1

In all these aspects it reflects Potter’s avant-garde impulse within this


more mainstream subject and treatment.

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At other moments, the camera cuts against the immaculate design
of the sets through a series of repeated movements and treatments. The
next recurrent camera movement that we encounter after the opening is
a kind of zig-zag track in which the camera first crosses left to right and
then shifts to cross right to left. This occurs during two encounters: the
first is when Orlando, late, runs into the crowded hall to take a bowl of
rose-petal water to the queen; and the second is in “1850 SEX,” in Or-
lando’s bed space as she walks around a table to Shelmerdine, carrying a
bowl of milk for a drink. In both cases the camera goes against the formal
lines of the mise-en-scène and other bodies present in the frame.
Given the subject matter, in these cases the camera could be seen
to express the power relationships between the tardy Orlando and the
queen, or Orlando and her emerging object of desire, Shelmerdine,
whom Orlando will wait on and then possess. Had these scenes been
filmed with a static camera and a shot that showed the entire space from
the beginning, the dynamics of power would not have been so appar-
ent. In the scene with Shelmerdine, it is as if the carrying of the bowl
of milk is a journey in itself. Orlando must walk around a long wooden
table unencumbered by the ridiculously large skirts she’s worn in earlier
scenes—as if she has grown into her femininity. In the earlier scene, we
see her run up the main aisle and skirt around some flower arrangements
to find her parents, from whom she collects the bowl of rosewater and
> > >=

then continues in a straight line to finish kneeling before the queen.


The similarity of these scenes, brought to our attention by the cam-
A

era movements, begs a comparison between the gestures that Orlando


0DD

makes to the queen and then to her prospective lover. Both are important
figures in her history, since both express their love for her and give her
6>

something—a house and then a child (we presume the girl is Shelmer-
P ? DD F

dine’s, although it is not explicitly indicated). The queen’s insistence


that Orlando not grow old and Shelmerdine’s gift of a child guarantee
9F >

Orlando’s longevity. In terms of his/her longing for company, these en-


counters are the most genuine of all, although the power relations are
reversed as we go from the first to the second.
A Q

On meeting Elizabeth I, Orlando acts as a young courtier, answering


P

the queen’s every whim. His innocence and youth are emphasized by
1

his association with water; as he hands her the rosewater bowl, we see a
shot–reverse-shot from the face of the queen to that of Orlando. While

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the shadow of the queen’s hair over her face makes it dark and could
associate her with death, on Orlando’s the rosewater makes patterns
that bleach out his skin even further.
Later, Orlando follows the queen around the gardens; she ties a
garter around his leg and then requires him to come and see her in her
bedroom. Here we see the queen take off her day garments and lie on her
bed. She calls Orlando to “come”; disengaging from the queen, he looks
apprehensively at the camera before approaching her bed. In front of the
fire, so that crackling flames play across the scene, the queen beckons
to Orlando to sit on her bed and then gives him the decree, taking his
face in her hands before instructing him not to wither or grow old.
In the scene with Shelmerdine, the earlier appearance of youthful
innocence is replaced by dark colors that contrast with Orlando’s pale
skin. Orlando’s eyes are now dark pupils of brown and black, and this
is echoed in a necklace with similar black circles. This darkness picks
up Shelmerdine’s dark hair, eyes, and clothes, and once again the scene
takes place next to a fire.
Orlando brings a bowl for drinking and hands it to Shelmerdine,
kneeling in front of him. She bends to pour some hot water from a
kettle into a larger bowl, and we cut from the kettle being poured to
Orlando’s face looking down. Although the position from which we look
at Orlando does not match exactly with that of Shelmerdine, it is meant
> > >=

to be his look at Orlando; this is a different kind of look at her than we


have encountered before. We notice her rising bosom and the swaying
A

of her necklace. Once she looks up at him, we see the way in which
0DD

her eyes match the black circles of her necklace and earrings. We cut
between Orlando and Shelmerdine as they look at each other and talk
6>

of his profession: “the pursuit of liberty.” Then the camera begins to


P ? DD F

pan from one to the other, a movement it makes more than once in
the film. The first time occurs when Orlando meets the Khan in Khiva,
9F >

and it is followed by the scene between Orlando and the poets in “1650
POETRY.” These previous times seem engineered to suggest awkward-
ness between the characters, which is absent from this later scene.
A Q

As Orlando and Khan drink to each other, we pan back and forth
P

between them. The use of a continuous pan rather than sharp cuts
1

means that the duration of the drinking is fully felt, and the awkwardness
of the encounter and actual space between the two characters is also

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captured. In the second example, the poets have gestured to Orlando to
sit down in front of them. She does so, and we cut to behind her head
as they begin to disparage “woman.” The pan takes us to either end of
the seated poets and prevents us from seeing Orlando’s face until the
verbal sparring ends, and we cut back around to witness her dismay.
In this case, the pan is less about showing the spatial arrangement of
characters than about complementing the poetic dialogue, which is un-
interrupted. Since the pan is from behind Orlando’s head, and we are
denied a reaction shot from her until the end, it also seems as if their
remarks are directed more widely than simply at her.
The half-moon pan in the scene with Shelmerdine takes place across
a conversation about shifting the roles that men and women should play.
Orlando begins by asking Shelmerdine how he fights for freedom and
insists that if she were a man she might choose not to fight. Shelmerdine
replies that she would not be a real man. He then insists that if he were a
woman, he would not sacrifice everything for his children; she asks if he
would then be a real woman. The pan takes us from one face to the other
in an extreme close-up, a movement that binds these people together as if
they are speaking the same words. The impression of two minds meeting
explains Orlando’s reaction, which is to passionately clasp Shelmerdine
to her, thus meeting mental closeness with physical closeness.
These repetitive panning movements become opportunities for us
> > >=

to assess Orlando’s encounters with other people. Substituting tempo-


ral continuity for the juxtaposition we might otherwise get from shot–
A

reverse-shots, they show the physical awkwardness, discomfort, and


0DD

overwhelming nature of these encounters and ultimately remind us


that those closest to Orlando are not a part of the fiction: those with
6>

whom he shares confidences (the audience). The series of three pan-


P ? DD F

ning sequences, like the zig-zag camera movements, punctuate the film
with comparable moments that mark key points in Orlando’s journey.
9F >

Whether we compare Queen Elizabeth and Shelmerdine, or the en-


counter with Khan, the poets, then Shelmerdine again, each of these
moments seem to be meant as an advance on “company.”
A Q

Orlando’s encounter with Shelmerdine almost threatens to break


P

the mold of solitude that has been set around him/her. However, she
1

cannot resist telling us, “I think I’m going to faint. I’ve never felt better
in my life,” thereby renewing the hierarchy of confidences in our favor.

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In terms of Potter’s practice thus far, though, Shelmerdine deserves
recognition as a radical hero. Unlike Rodolpho and the other artists
and poets, or the men who dance with and then chase Ruby or obstruct
Celeste, Shelmerdine understands Orlando. This is apparent from their
first conversation, when she says that she does not even know his name,
though she feels she knows everything about him, and he says that is
what happens when like meets like.
Although the opening of Orlando and the many reverse looks that
follow interrupt the flow of the narrative and ensure that cracks appear
in the illusion, in the moments when the story flows we witness a more
fully rounded character. For the first time in Potter’s oeuvre, in Orlando
we meet a character (rather than a performer) who is allowed to desire,
and whose desire we witness onscreen. Whereas Thriller is the story of
Mimi rejecting her place in the tragic narrative, in which there seems
to be no place to explore her desire, and The Gold Diggers finds only
female partners for its protagonists, in Orlando we are witness to his
pursuit of Sacha and her affair with Shelmerdine.
This is also the first Potter film in which we encounter the male
gaze; it would be followed by Pablo in The Tango Lesson, César in The
Man Who Cried, and then HE in YES. In all of these films the men
look uneasily, and desire is matched by other emotions. In Orlando the
difficulty of gazing is most pronounced; this is not the all-mastering gaze
> > >=

that characterizes male desire in mainstream film.


The awkwardness of Orlando’s desire, his vulnerability and pow-
A

erlessness once in its thrall, is emphasized by the many close-ups on


0DD

his face. The first close-up we have of Orlando contrasts his innocent,
youthful face with that of the queen. This is followed by an extreme
6>

close-up, again a reverse shot from the queen’s face once she has stopped
P ? DD F

him from reciting his poem; this time he looks confused, and we see
him swallow nervously. In the next scene the queen’s revelation as she
9F >

puts a garter on his leg—that he will stay in England, the son of her old
age—is played through an extreme close-up of Orlando looking up with
uncertainty.
A Q

This accumulation of Orlando’s visage represents him as innocent,


P

young, and vulnerable and very much at the mercy of the queen, due
1

to her seniority in years and position. The funeral of Orlando’s mother,


where we are given only a side view of him, is followed by a moment

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when he faces the camera with his fiancée as if for a portrait, standing
underneath the portrait of his parents. We next encounter his gaze on
the ice, once he catches sight of Sacha. Orlando skates next to his fian-
cée, then looks to the side and sees Sacha skating confidently around
her father and his men. To stand and look, Orlando extracts himself
from his fiancée and positions himself next to the Earl of Moray, as if
his desiring gaze needs the company of another man to strengthen it.
Both stare at Sacha as her party are presented to the host. As Moray
turns away, Orlando moves closer and stares harder, transfixed.
Later, at supper in a tent, Orlando sits on the end of a table with that
same look on his face. He and Sacha talk and are filmed using equally
extreme close-ups. The vulnerability that was present in Orlando’s face
in the company of the queen remains, as he looks down slightly to Sa-
cha, but his bare face contrasts sharply with hers, lined with the fur
from her hat. While she turns her head slightly to listen to the host
telling a joke to her father, Orlando remains facing forward, flattened
by the lack of contrasting shadows and thrusting, as if trying to pierce
her with his gaze.
The centerpiece of Orlando’s desiring gaze follows the meal. A stately
dance begins, for which the couples line up in the middle while Sacha
and her partner skate around in a circle. As Orlando’s friends chide him
for his pursuit of a “cossack” at the expense of every English woman in
> > >=

the land, he becomes increasingly absorbed in the circling Sacha and


increasingly exhibitionist in following her with his gaze. However, the
A

pattern of the dancing makes it difficult for him to look elsewhere and
0DD

follow Sacha, since he is surrounded by other dancers, and it is hard for


him to see beyond their lines. Ultimately, he breaks rank completely and,
6>

looking backwards when he should be looking forwards, skates on bended


P ? DD F

knee out of the circle and across to Sacha, who encircles him more
directly as he declares his love for her. Gazing and desiring are shown
9F >

to be difficult, censored by society and Orlando’s position—a public act


through which Orlando becomes increasingly conspicuous and that is not
as easy or conventional as one might expect. This still-vulnerable gaze
A Q

will later be contrasted with the equality between Orlando and Shelmer-
P

dine in which, although both are framed equally, Shelmerdine’s role as


1

patient, having twisted his ankle, could either be seen as forcing Orlando
into a caring role or allowing her to be more active in the seduction.

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Looking at Orlando’s playful translation of the novel’s self-conscious
style, we can see how this film overcame the pleasure-time blues of
Potter’s early work. By creating an illusionist diegetic world that is also
broken with (through the reverse look, camera movement, and editing)
and added to (through the performance elements), Potter combines the
entertaining and the critical. The film remains her biggest success and
at one point was even the highest-selling film at the British box office.
Further, and most important, the disengagement that is encouraged
in Potter’s first two films is present in a very different way here, as the
film ends with the utopian suggestion that Orlando has been able to let
go of the past because she has assured her place in the future with the
birth of her daughter. Creativity and company are the conflicting lines
through the narrative, and they find their way into The Tango Lesson.

The Tango Lesson


Following the critical and commercial success of Orlando, it would have
been easy for Potter to put the years of struggling behind her and take
one of the many Orlando-like projects that were being offered to her.
Instead, she took the time to develop her own ideas (including a first
draft of The Man Who Cried) and took time out from writing to learn
the tango to a professional level. Inevitably, perhaps, she came back to
the cinema.
> > >=

If some of the challenge of adapting Orlando had to do with the


visualizing of Woolf’s prose, in The Tango Lesson Potter had to find ex-
A

ternal ways of expressing the personal effects of the tango on the body.
0DD

Choreography, camera, and editing combine to inscribe the audience


in the passionate space that Sally discovers in her most successful mo-
6>

ments of dancing. What is most surprising about her success in dancing


P ? DD F

is that it opens up a feminine space that Sally grows to like. However, the
central partnership between Sally (Potter, as herself) and Pablo (Pablo
9F >

Veron), with its jostling of egos, problematizes this feminine space by


reminding her that in relaxing, enjoying, and letting go, in following her
desire, she also relinquishes some control.
A Q

The contrast between the dancing Sally loves and the directing role
P

that she cannot let go of might be seen as one between femininity and
1

feminism. Lucy Fischer contrasts the trials of the screenplay Sally is


writing in the film with the joys of the tango she discovers thus: “[I]n

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